Plein Air Studies and Christmas Prezzies

[Richard Robinson]

"Old Friends" 10x8" Oil on Canvasboard

Hi All, did this one last week and was really happy with it - took about an hour and a half. After returning home from my South Island adventure I was a bit dismayed to see all these green fields defying me to paint them. (Got a wee aversion to painting lots of bright green). But there are a few fields around which are a beautiful golden brown like this one so I made a beeline for it with my paints.

Thankfully I filmed it while I was painting and have since edited it into another Painting Adventure dvd (the third). The South Island dvd was completed about a week ago, just before I painted this piece. If you remember I sent out a message asking all the members to vote on which of my South Island paintings to turn into a painting dvd, and the votes came in pretty overwhelmingly in favor of The Old Mill House.

So I returned to the same spot with John Crump as my camera man for the day. Had 3 cameras going so it turned out to be quite a chore to edit it all, but it's all done now and I'm really happy that it's captured not only most of what I learned painting with John, but also some of the spirit of fun that we had while painting together.

It's uploading to my server as I write this, so all going well I will have that available within the next few days. I thought it would be nice to give everyone a bit of a Christmas prezzy too, so I'll offer the 3rd painting adventure dvd (of the 'Old Friends' painting above) for free when they purchase the first two painting adventure dvds (or downloads). I did consider just giving it away without a purchase involved, but I often find that we don't tend to value things as much when they're given away like that, and I do put a lot of work into these things so I like them to be valued. (plus I'd like people to see all three adventures.)

So it's going to look like this:

... but as I said, it's not ready quite yet - I'll let you know in the next few days hopefully. If you've already purchased the Langs Beach adventure and wish to get the same discount on the next 2 just send me an email and I'd be happy to do that for you.

Hope everyone's doing well and not getting too overwhelmed by the holiday season. We plan to get out and do some camping and stuff like that with the kiddies and the water's warming up here so we may even get some surfing done. Remember when Summer seemed to last all year? :-) Good times.

All the best,

Richard

[Richard Robinson]

You can count the number of plein air painters in NZ on two hands. Seriously. It's so difficult to begin with but it's so much more rewarding than studio painting when things go right - I'm sure everyone will come around sooner or later :-) Good luck finding a group, and if you're ever over this way we'll be the entire TransTasman plein air painting group.

[Richard Robinson]

Thanks Peter. The dvds are of me painting on location, which is what I'm most interested in doing now, and I've tried to make them as informative as possible as always, however they're not a structured course like the mastering color dvd. My intention is that each adventure I record will teach various different aspects of landscape painting, be possible to follow through as a step by step process, and inspire people to get outdoors painting, or at the very least get their brushes wet. The painting above was the result of me watching a friend's painting dvd beforehand and being inspired to get off my butt and go painting, so hopefully the resulting dvd will do the same for some other painters out there.